Q1. In What way does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

By Eden Brooks

Video Evaluation

Clothing When researching for our music video we came up with a list of clothing

items that we deemed to be related to the indie genre. We included this list in our audience research. We also tried to wear these items of clothing in our video. We made sure that all the band members wore Skinny jeans and we all wore either v-necks or shirts with the buttons done up and either smart shoes or vans as this is a convention of the indie genre.

Clean Camerawork and Editing• Through indie music videos we watched during our research we

found that indie videos generally have lots of clean cut camera shots and panning shot with occasional use of transition. Compared with other videos of different genres you can see the difference from indie to hip hop, e.g fish eye shot beastie boys. You would not see such shots in an indie video, where special effects and costumes are used. Indie videos have more a simple style to them.

• Our video follows the conventions of the simple clean cut style by using still shots and panning techniques, with some examples of tracking shots. We rarely used any special effects when it came to editing techniques other than fade which we used in the skateboarding shots to reflect the slow build up in the songs tempo.

Performance / Narrative

• Our video was mainly a performance, with the narrative focusing on what the band like to do.

• A lot of indie genre music videos that we looked at in our research had more focus on the performance aspect that the narrative, so we repeated this in our own video to follow the conventions of the indie genre. I feel we followed this convention in our video, which we achieved through storyboarding each shot so we could

Mise-En-Scene• We used the narrative shots to show what an indie band

would get up to when they’re not performing. We came up with activities that an indie band would do using our existing knowledge of indie fans, we concluded on skateboarding, fixed gear bicycle riding, going to the pub and waiting around. We included these activities in our video.

Digi-pak Evaluation

The Font

• We decided to use the font (Cooper Black) for our digipak. In the research we did on album adverts and digipaks we found that indie bands try to make their products look as simple and clean as they can while using contrasts to catch the eye of the reader. So we followed this convention of the genre, as we wanted the text on our digipak to be easy to read and stand out. Below is an example of an album advert by Jamie T which I analysed for my research. The use of colour and font allow for the text to be easily seen and read.

The Images• All but one image for the digipak were taken from our finished

music video. We used these images because it shows the audience who is in the band and to create a motif of the bands profile but the close up shots don’t give much away about our personalities and what we are like apart from our dress sense, which we styled to follow the forms of the indie genre. If we had another chance to go back and change the digi-pak I would have included more mise-en-scene which would show what the band does in it’s free time, which is partly what we tried to show in our music video. The image that we took ourselves at the train station is used to show that the band is waiting to go somewhere, and the image of the bench with no-one waiting can be looked at as a metaphor that the band is on it’s way to where it wants to go.

The Colour

• We decided to put all the images in black and white as we felt it was more simple and easy to look at, rather than lots of uncoordinated colours that look tacky and unprofessional. The black and white also represents the bands monotone approach to life, with the one tone in their life being their band and the indie genre.

Album Advert Evaluation

• For the album advert we decided to use an editing effect that involved chopping up separate images and putting them together to make one image using Photoshop. We decided to use this as we felt it looked good and we were inspired to use it as it was a style used in the Temper Trap music video for My Sun.

Q2. How effective is the combination of the main product and all

ancillary products?

I feel the three products we produced combine effectively to sell the album. The music video focuses on selling the band; who they are and what they do, it shows the band members doing activities that relate to the indie genre . The style of clothing the band wears also help to sell the album, it allows the audience to connect with the band through their style of clothing and are therefore able to relate to the band, hopefully making them more willing to buy the album.

The digipak takes still images from the music video for 5 of the 6 images. It helps to sell the album as it shows images of the band which again, sells the style of the band and the style of music they play. It helps to reinforce the bands image by showing images of each band member close up. It also shows clearly the age group of the band (17-19) which allows the audience to connect more with the band. The other image that we took separately is used mainly as a filler image although the empty bench also represents that the band had been waiting to go somewhere, and are now on their way to getting to where they want to be now they have the album out.

The digi-pak and Album advert relate to each other as they both use images of the band in black and white with bold coloured font to allow for easy reading and so that the text can be seen. The three products are easily recognisable as being part of the same range of products as they all contain similar elements and styles such as the same actors and clothing style.

The fact we have a used a completely different image in our album advert shows that the band are willing to do things differently and do things that aren’t expected of them, for example a stereotypical band would use the front cover of their digi-pak as their album advert but we didn’t. This allowed us to play around with differenteffects on the album advert. Which were inspired by one of their other videos. We used the same actors in our album advert so the people who have seen the video / or digi-pakwill be able to easily recognise them.

Q3. What’ve you learned from your audience

feedback?

• Here is our survey results from survey monkey that we posted on Facebook and on our YouTube video and asked people who we knew were fans of the indie genre to fill in. This feed back was gathered after we had completed our video and ancillary products. Therefore this is more of a rating of our video and feedback to what the audience thought and so whatever we can learn from it we can’t apply to our products as unfortunately we ran out of time, however we can carry on the feedback to media products that we may construct in the future.

• From the results you can see that no body who watched our video thought that any aspect of our video that we asked about was rated below a 3 out of 5. Which shows that our video is liked by viewers, and is relevant to the indie genre. If the ratings had been lower we would have known our video was unsuccessful in following the conventions of the indie genre from a fans viewpoint.

Above is a comment that we received on survey monkey. They give us lots of positive feedback on our video and what we did right in terms of the codes of the indie genre, such as the natural narrative shots of the band members around the town centre. I think this is a good comment that I agree with and that given more time on our project, and if we’d had the hindsight to bring another battery for the camera I’m sure we would of been able incorporate into our video in order to improve it.

This person also criticises our slow-motion skateboarding shots which I also agree with which is partly my personal fault as I was holding the camera, we did try use a tripod when filming these shots but we felt they didn’t give the right angle that we wanted and we agreed that the handheld shots gave a better look. To improve this we should have taken more time on these shots to get them perfect. This person also comments on the length of the shots.

Overall, this persons feedback was useful in that it told us they enjoyed our video and that they felt it was “brilliant”; which I feel is a very good endorsement of our video. However looking at some of the more specific positive and negative comments it becomes clear that this person enjoys the video but they do not go into enough detail on why specifically they enjoy certain aspects and so this hinders are ability to learn from it, for example if this person had told us why he thought the location of our performance shots were perfect for the indie genre rather than just saying they were perfect, it could help us to understand further how we followed the conventions of the genre.Also, if the person had told us how we could improve our non-live shots, as they thought they were “a bit hit-and-miss”, then this would put us in a much better position in order to learn from the feedback for future purposes.

Audience Research

From our audience research we didn’t gather much new information that we didn’t already know, it just helped us to confirm what we knew about the forms of the genre. If we had another chance to do the audience research again we would have asked more open questions that could have got us some information that we could actually use, and miss out the questions asking about gender and age, as they were pretty irrelevant when it came to actually telling us anything, it also didn’t help that the people who took the survey often lied or made inappropriate comments in the open comments boxes. We ignored these results.

Q4. How did you use new media technology in the construction, research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Research Stage

• In this stage of my project, I used the internet to find examples of existing media products that I was asked to produce.

• I used YouTube to look at and analyse existing music videos in my chosen genre.

• I also used BlogSpot to create a blog in which to chronologically present our work.

Planning• We used the application SlideShare to put our PowerPoint presentations

onto our blog so they could be easily accessed, we also used slide share to put up scanned photos of our shot list and storyboard so they could be displayed on our blog as evidence of planning.

• HD Video camera We used a HD video camera to film evidence of audience research with a fan of the indie genre as well as take pictures of potential locations.

• Survey monkey online survey We used Survey monkey online to gain primary research for our video and ideas of what to include and to find out how the indie genre is seen by it’s fans.

• To find our audience to take the survey we used Facebook to ask people to fill in our surveys, however this lead to a few inappropriate responses.

Construction • HD Video camera In constructing our music video we used

a HD video camera to achieve high quality video recording.• We used mobile phones to contact each other and arrange

when to meet. We also used mobile phones to sort out our actors and props. • We used the weather app to check ahead of schedule what the weather was going to be like in the

run up to the construction of our music video. • Portable Speakers were used with an Ipod in order to make

sure we were performing in time to the song.

Evaluation

• I used the Internet and Blogpot to go back and look at my previous work in order to answer the evaluation questions

• Power point was used in order to answer the evaluation questions and so SlideShare could be used to display the work in a tidy, professional way.

• I also used screen shots to help emphasise and illustrate my points